Date published: 2008/02/22
The BBC says:
A row has broken out over Conservative claims that Labour had not lived up to a promise of free educational visits to Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Conservatives included the Labour pledge in a list of 26 "gimmicks" it said the government failed to deliver.
Labour hit back by saying the reference to Auschwitz visits as a "gimmick" was "truly disgraceful" and offensive to the Jewish community.
But the Tories said there was genuine concern about the lack of funding.
The reference to Auschwitz visits was in briefing notes to a speech by Conservative leader David Cameron.
It said the government has promised funding for two pupils from every sixth form and college in the country to visit the Nazi concentration camp where millions of Jews were murdered during World War II.
But schools must find £100 towards the £350 cost of every sixth formers' trip.
A Conservative spokesman said: "There is no way we think that trips to Auschwitz are a gimmick.
"The gimmick is for the government to make an announcement without providing the means for it to happen."
But Schools Secretary Ed Balls said: "Anyone who has seen the horrors of Auschwitz at first-hand knows what a life-changing experience it is.
"To call the announcement I made of £4.65m to fund visits by school children over the next three years a 'gimmick' just beggars belief.
For once the Tories are correct. It "just beggars belief" how low the government can stoop in its attempt to play the Holocaust card. Mind you, the Tories should probably have been aware that the government (and other people with an interest in playing the Holocaust card) would stoop that low, and the Tories should have been more careful in the way they brought this up.
One of the dreadful legacies of the Labour government is its totally cynical approach to making announcements, where the headlines sound good but the unspoken details belie the actual cost (not to mention that the same policy, and alleged funding, is announced over and over again as if it were new). Given that Cameron's background is in PR, expect this, unbelievably, to become even worse with the next Tory government.
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